Diary of a Podcaster Part 6
Professor Beej recently tweeted about consolidating all his various blogs and online activities into a single entity. I naturally agreed with him and encouraged him to do so because I did something similar back in 2010. I had a gaming blog and a site for movies reviews plus a podcast to manage. It ultimately made sense to put all these thing in one place, despite their respective differences because the common factor in all of them was me. To coin a rather nauseating phrase “you are your own brand”. This is how Contains Moderate Peril came to be. In recent years, I’ve embraced this concept further and will now write or podcast about any subject that really takes my fancy. I try to stick to the things that I like but from time to time, I do stray in to wider real world subjects.
Since June 2015 I’ve been using Soundcloud to host The Burton & Scrooge Podcast. The cost is not huge, being £8 per month but it’s still another of the many minor expenses that come with having an online presence. So, I’ve been considering alternatives of late, not only for reason of fiscal prudence but also for reasons of brand continuity. Despite the fact that The Burton & Scrooge Podcast broadly does exactly the same thing as it predecessor, the Contains Moderate Peril Podcast, it has never generated the same sort of numbers. I’m beginning to think that the name is one of the contributory reasons for this. A comment left on a previous Diary of a Podcaster lent credence to this line of thought.
I then discovered recently that the Squarespace subscription that I use for this blog, also supports podcast hosting. I can use the feed and submit it directly to iTunes. Because Squarespace has robust infrastructure, there are no bandwidth and processor usage issues to consider, thus no extra costs. So, I have decided to start hosting future podcasts right here on Contains Moderate Peril. Furthermore, I managed to revamp the old Feedburner RSS feed that was used on the old podcast and link it to Squarespace. Finally, to ensure that the branding is uniform, Burton and Scrooge will gracefully retire and be replaced by the all new (and therefore completely the same) Contains Moderate Peril Podcast. If all goes well these changes will be made by the end of the month and a new show should be available in early May.
These branding changes have also presented me with the opportunity to revise the site logo and order some new podcast artwork. I also have new voiceovers being recorded for the new podcast. I’m also not giving up on the side projects I’ve mentioned in prior posts. They will simply be subsets of Contains Moderate Peril Podcast. Therefore, Brian will feature on some shows but not necessarily on others, depending on his interest in the featured topic. I’m also hoping to strong arm a few of my “retired” colleagues into participating on occasions. Show notes will also be making a return. Sadly, the only thing I cannot offer is a weekly recording schedule. That is still off the table due to “real life” etc. So, this is the current plan. Let’s see if it pays dividends.
